Stuart Broad did not miss the chance to make his point, with a light touch and a smile, to the rabble-rousers in the Australian media after his stunning five-wicket performance on the opening day of the Ashes series, carrying a copy of Brisbane's Courier-Mail into his post-match press conference. But the England quick insisted, plausibly, that he took more satisfaction from finally making an impact in Australia, and from the collective point they had made to their hosts, than in any personal point-scoring.

The 27-year-old's only previous Ashes tour in 2010-11, a trip he had been dreaming of since early childhood, ended prematurely and cruelly with a torn abdominal muscle during the second Test in Adelaide. Before that he had been dismissed for a first-ball duck at the Gabba as the last victim of Peter Siddle's first-day hat-trick, then failed to take a wicket in 33 sweaty and luckless overs in Australia's first innings, and he ended the series with two wickets that had cost 80 apiece, and a batting average of nought.

"I have watched games at the Gabba since I was a youngster, staying up for the first 10 minutes until I fell asleep," he said. "So to be able to come here and pick up wickets, and as a team to stamp our authority on the series like we have – that is what we are here for.

"We almost feel like silent assassins on this trip. We haven't been mentioned too much, we've just been going under the radar and focusing on what we had to do, and all the attention has been on the Australians – which was perfect for us. It meant we could just crack on with our business and get ourselves ready.

"Now we're here we're in for the fight and you'll see our players stand up. The training has been excellent and it is a relief we've started a series quite well for once. Normally we're behind the eight ball by now so we're delighted in that changing room."

So seeing himself labelled as "a smug Pommie cheat" on the front of the Courier-Mail, and hearing a fair proportion of the 30,000 crowd chanting a description of him that rhymed with banker, had not influenced him at all? "It was something a bit different but I think I coped with it OK. I'm pleased my mum wasn't in the stadium. But to be honest I was singing along at one stage, it gets in your head and you find yourself whistling it at the end of your mark – but not putting the words in, obviously. I'd braced myself to expect it and actually it was good fun, I actually quite enjoyed it if I'm being really honest.

"In our medical assessments, our psychologist mentioned about what kind of personality you are and there are three guys in this side who thrive properly on getting abuse and it's KP, myself and Matty Prior. So they picked the good men to go at. It's good fun and at the end of the day as a player you're focusing on your routines, not what the crowd are doing.

"But there is something about Ashes cricket that brings the best out of me, there's a little bit more niggle playing against the Aussies, it means so much to me that I feel it does bring the best out of me. Looking to the future I want a lot more."

As for the media attention, "I don't give it the time of the day particularly. It doesn't change how you bowl the ball, what shots you play and we don't read the papers in the changing room anyway so I have not been aware of too much. A couple of my mates had mentioned it, but I just saw this [the newspaper] outside and it made me smile.

"It doesn't spur me on, that's for sure. You do not need any more inspiration than playing for your country in Australia's backyard in the first Test of the series."

When he broke the stubborn seventh-wicket partnership by bowling Mitchell Johnson with the second new ball, Broad became the first man to take 50 Test wickets in 2013 – Jimmy Anderson has been the next most successful, taking his tally to 43 by the close of day one. It was Broad's 11th haul of five wickets or more, five of which have come this year.

Yet he insisted he has bowled much better, although he did take special satisfaction from the dismissal of Australia's captain, Michael Clarke. "I actually didn't feel that good today, to be honest," he said. "It was one of those days where the wickets came to me. I didn't bowl particularly well in the morning session. My first two or three overs weren't the Georgie Best, to be honest, but I came back after lunch and really enjoyed that Vulture Street end. Getting Pup out like that gave me a little bit of a lift.

"He's their star man, averages over 50 in Test cricket so we know what a big player he is for them. I think you always have specific plans for their best players – to get two short legs in [and] to get him caught short leg was awesome because we do our bowling meetings and that's exactly how we wanted it to go. For the plan to work it gives the whole team a whole lift but as a bowler to execute it when you've said you would is brilliant. When it hit him and went straight to Belly you saw how much it meant to the guys.

"But no, I wouldn't class it as one of my better five-fors from a bowling purist point of view – but it was my best in terms of the scenario, day and experience."

Stuart Broad v Australia

12 July: Broad chooses not to walk in the first Ashes Test at Trent Bridge after being given not out by the umpire Aleem Dar, despite having edged a ball from Ashton Agar – via wicketkeeper Brad Haddin's gloves – to first slip. He goes on to make 65 in England's second innings, and a dramatic and controversial match ends in a 14-run home win.

21 August: On day one of the final Test at The Oval, the Australia coach, Darren Lehmann, spectacularly breaks ranks – after a month of diplomacy on the issue – in an interview on the Sydney-based radio station Triple M. He accuses Broad of "blatant cheating", and adds: "Certainly our players haven't forgotten – they're calling him everything under the sun as they go past … I just hope the Australian public give it to him right from the word go for the whole summer, and I hope he cries and he goes home. I just hope everyone gets stuck into him because the way he's carried on and the way he's commented in public about it is ridiculous."

23 August: The International Cricket Council announce Lehmann will be fined 20% of his match fee – around £2,000 – for his remarks about Broad.

26 August: One day after England complete their 3-0 Ashes series win, the coach Andy Flower concedes they will be using extra security around the team on tour in Australia for the rematch – amid speculation that Broad in particular will be targeted by Australian crowds and media.

28 October: Broad is asked by his former England captain Michael Vaughan, in an interview on the BBC's Radio 5 Live, whether he would stand his ground again if the same circumstances were revisited in Australia. He tells him: "Yes. I won't nick; I'll hit it for four."

5 November: Still little more than a week into England's tour, long before hostilities begin in earnest at the Gabba, the Melbourne-based company Googandjerra try to tap into the national antipathy to Broad by printing up a T-shirt. Its slogan, inside a circular union flag against a black background and next to a generic, tall left-handed batsman, reads: "Never Forgive. Cheating is a Broad Church."

19 November: Broad is described as a "sook" – Aussie slang for sulk – by David Warner, the combative opener who received plenty of flak from English crowds himself last summer after punching Joe Root in a Birmingham bar. Broad was accused of having two hecklers removed from the SCG during the previous week's tour match, but strenuously denied any such incident.